Anyone who’s ever sold something online knows how painful the process can be: from receiving the order, to manually calculating and writing the label, and finally, visiting a Canada Post location to drop off the parcel, it’s a long and tedious journey that can go wrong at any turn.
PayPal and Canada Post have teamed up to create a new integrated payment and shipping solution for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and casual sellers that will allow them to track their orders, print shipping labels on site, and pay for shipping from their PayPal account.
The new feature will automatically send tracking information and delivery confirmation alerts to both the seller and their customer once a shipping label has been created. It will also let users schedule a parcel pick-up from Canada Post to save them the time and effort of dropping off the parcels themselves to a post office location.
“Shipping and order fulfillment are some of the most complicated things that the e-commerce business struggles with in Canada, and this partnership will hopefully eliminate all the logistical nightmares,” Paul Parisi, president of PayPal Canada, tells IT World Canada.
He points to the results of a recent Ipsos study commissioned by PayPal, which found that essentially one in five of the 1,000 Canadian SMBs surveyed believe shipping and logistics is one of the biggest challenges of moving online. And for customers that are already online, “the process they have to go through to ship something out to their customer is cumbersome at best.”
For example, Russel Pulkys, founder of Toronto-based screen printing company Waves Apparel, explains that the previous order fulfillment process was “hectic” and a “big waste of time.”
“It was a manual process from receiving orders, printing labels to fulfilling the shipment at a Canada Post outlet. With this new solution, in a couple of clicks we can print a shipping label, pay for shipping with the balance in our PayPal account and schedule a pick-up straight away,” he adds. “It’s great that PayPal and Canada Post have teamed up to introduce this new solution that makes our lives easier.”
The partnership will allow sellers to link their PayPal and Canada Post Solutions for Small Business accounts, and be eligible for discounts of up to 36 per cent and 47 per cent on domestic and international shipments, respectively. And until July 31, 2017, eligible businesses can save an additional 15 per cent on Expedited Parcel when shipping within Canada.
“We are pleased to work with PayPal to launch a convenient, easy-to-use shipping and payment solution for small businesses that will save them precious time and money as they ship parcels,” Lise Côté, general manager of consumer and small business marketing at Canada Post, says in a June 1 press release. “Canada Post and PayPal are committed to growing e-commerce in the country and this is the start of a strategic partnership between the two companies to deliver innovative and convenient solutions for Canadian online sellers and retailers.”
For more information on how the solution will work, you can watch the video below from PayPal and Canada Post.
Canada Post delivers almost two of every three parcels that Canadian consumers order online, reaching 15.8 million addresses and operating the country’s largest retail network. PayPal is used by more than 6.3 million consumers in Canada, and over 250,000 businesses in the country.
“With this partnership, all our customers will be able to fill orders without ever leaving their office or home, meaning business will increase while the process of shipping becomes more efficient and cost-effective,” Parisi explains.
The arrangement comes as a result of PayPal’s discussions with its customers regarding their concerns, challenges, and pain points – and how to solve them.
“It’s important for people to understand that they more they work with us and help us understand their problems, through our focus groups and customer meeting, we can continue to make this e-commerce business more available and easy to manage,” Parisi adds.
With the Canadian e-commerce industry expected to be worth $42 billion in 2018, PayPal wants to help businesses take advantage of the wide-ranging opportunities available on the online market. Parisi also doesn’t rule out additional partnerships with other delivery services
“We’ll do anything we can to help our businesses, so as we continue to discuss what their needs are, we’ll obviously form partnerships in the future that solve the next pain points they have,” he concludes.
